


The Perfect Fit

by colls



Category: The Losers (2010), The Losers - All Media Types
Genre: Community: ante_up_losers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-19
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:48:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/pseuds/colls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Other units Cougar tried on before he found the one that, like his hat, fit him best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Perfect Fit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MontanaHarper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontanaHarper/gifts).



Cougar’s first assignment after sniper school was out of Fort Dixon. It was a strange unit because it actually spent most of its time at Fort Dixon, instead of being deployed anywhere a sniper unit would be deployed. It supposedly dealt in theoreticals. 

Cougar wore his hat during the morning briefings. The CO frowned at him, but never asked him to remove it. So the hat stayed. 

In fact, no one mentioned it at all until they borrowed some tech guy named Jensen for a special project. Cougar learned there was a reason for the stereotype that all techs do is talk. Jake looked up from his computer and was actually silent for thirty seconds while he stared at Cougar. 

“What’s with the hat?” 

The unit held their collective breath and darted nervous glances between Cougar and Jensen. Cougar said nothing.

Jensen continued. “I guess it doesn’t matter, since this unit never goes anywhere.” He launched into a litany about recent missions he’d been on.

Cougar decided his current assignment was too sedate if the most interesting thing to happen so far was that Jensen showed up.

The project finished, Jensen left the following week. Cougar put in for a transfer the week after that. 

 

 

Cougar questioned the wisdom of his transfer a couple months later when he was marching through jungle terrain. He thought his new unit was okay, but they had no sense of timing whatsoever. 

The man in front of him pushed a branch out of the way. 

The unit took the army practice of ‘hurry up and wait’ and elevated it to an art form. If they were departing at oh-seven-hundred, everyone would technically be there on time, but someone wouldn’t be ready to go. They would run at least fifteen minutes late.

The branch let loose, swung back and snapped his hat off his head, flinging it into a tree.

Cougar never said a word about the timing thing, but it drove him nuts. The nuance between being on time and being ready to go on time was lost on some. 

Cougar ignored muttered complaints about having to wait on the trail as he retrieved his hat. 

Cougar decided that it was because they weren’t snipers. Snipers seemed to have a similar sense of timing and things moved smoothly. 

He put his hat back on his head and took his position. This unit had no sense of what was important.

 

 

Courier jobs were among Cougar’s least favorite types of mission. Inevitably something went wrong when you sent a sniper team to transport things from one place to another. This time the job was in the exotic and dangerous locale of North Dakota, so dangerous that no one bothered to read the mission material. 

Naturally, their primary transportation didn't pan out and they were scrambling to meet up with Plan B at a small airstrip outside of town. 

On top of that, the package they recovered weighed more than expected. It looked as if the small twin engine wasn’t going to clear the tree line after take-off. The CO ordered everyone to toss something overboard and began throwing out items from his pack, his belt, a k-bar. Other members of the unit did the same.

One guy reached over to Cougar to toss his hat out the window. Cougar batted his hand away and growled at him.

“Oh come on, Alvarez. Everything non-essential.” 

Cougar stripped off his pants and tossed them out the window. He sat there with his rifle settled across his lap and glared at everyone. 

The plane ride had been miserable and disembarking a couple hours later in South Dakota was no picnic either. At least he still had his hat.

 

 

In his fourth unit assignment since sniper school, Cougar ran into Jensen again. Crammed into the back of a surveillance van, tensions were running high and Jensen was rattling off some technobabble to the CO and arguing loudly about how to run the mission. He insisted that the CO was focusing his firepower in the wrong place and that he should shift his attention to the south.

“Clay sent you to me because he hates me.” The CO muttered as he exited the van. Cougar followed, nodding to Jensen as he passed.

“Glad to see you still have the hat.” Jensen said, smiling like he hadn’t just been chewed out by a man with a very large gun. Cougar admired his attitude.

The mission went down just like Jensen said it would. Only a last minute change, one that involved moving the team slightly south, had kept anyone from being killed. That and Jensen barrelling into the middle of the frenzy with only his sidearm. 

The unit CO called Jensen’s CO and wanted to know what kind of field team gave a geek a gun anyway. He scowled at Jensen as the unit debriefed and Cougar put in for yet another transfer. 

 

 

It’d been several months and Cougar decided he liked the Losers. Sure, Clay could be a hardass and often made bad decisions when it came to women, but overall he was a decent CO. Roque and his knives were more reassuring than scary and Pooch and Jensen were comical, efficient and very verbal -- always yammering away at each other in an amicable banter that secretly calmed everyone’s nerves. 

Unlike his other units, this unit was a team and the team was in sync. They each had their own distinct style, but damn if they didn’t choreograph a beautiful mission when they needed to. He thought of the small arms dealer they’d just taken down and how spectacular the explosion of his warehouse had been. Yeah, that had been pretty sweet. 

Some special ops units demanded special treatment and Cougar thought it made them look like a bunch of pretentious dicks. The Losers didn’t mind hopping on the low budget rides, which suited him just fine.

As they waited on the tarmac for the military transport to refuel, Jensen lightly kicked Cougar’s boot.

“So you ever gonna tell us about your hat?”

Cougar was leaned back with his hat cocked forward and down over his face feigning a nap. He didn’t bother opening his eyes. “Nope.”

Pooch told Jensen to leave Cougar alone and dived into a diatribe about some martial arts video game. That kept both of them occupied for the forty or so minutes it took before they could board the transport.

Cougar smiled when it was clear that Jensen wasn’t going to give up that easily. Once he settled in the jumpseat he heard Jensen ask, “No, really Cougs. What’s with the hat?”

end/


End file.
